This Weekend~Come Home to Yourself

Today would be a great day to decide that no matter how long the road is, you are going to come home to yourself and reflect the grace-filled life that is meant for you.
~Adapted from the Brave Girls’ Club

~~~

More weekend activities

A word from The Sponsor~April 14~Grace

the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you… ~1 Peter 1:10

Grace turns veers alters changes transforms rotations revolves, rotates twists spins circles twirls rolls your life around

 

Mid-week Question~January 30~Spirit of Open

On this last Wednesday of the first month of the “new” year, I am wondering about openness. I read an article meant for instructional tech on building open source online courses. The article asked an academic question:

Is there a “Spirit of Open?”

Instead of Open Course Software, I wonder instead about another venue of openness. I wonder about non-academic openness. I am wondering about identity openness. And while all my wondering is going on, Julie Daley posts a quote online. This part stuns me:

But when you look at anything as separate from you, you cannot love it for you are afraid of it. Alienation causes fear and fear deepens alienation. It is a vicious circle. ~Nisargadatta Maharaj, From “I am that.”

Do I build my identity around my defects, as Rick Warren declares? If so, can I be open? Can I have a “Spirit of Open” to another way?

Might I begin again? Might I remember who I am not? And while Nisargadatta Maharaj of the quote above advocates “Only self – realization can break it. Go for it resolutely,” might there also be another option?

Might I nurture a Spirit of Open and (re)build my identity around who I am in Grace? Who I am in God’s eyes?

How might we nurture a Spirit of Open?

This Weekend: The discount you never want to take

Today is a day of Big discounts! Deep discounts! Outrageous discounts!

Please remember, friend, never to apply a discount on your spirit-your talents-your place in His arms.
That is a price too great to pay.

~~~

Other posts on Blessings

Other Weekend Activities

Wealth or Poverty

Herbert Simon, Nobel Prize winning economist commented

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention”

Do you agree?

I think a variation of this is true in my spiritual life.

A wealth of distractions creates of poverty of attention on my relationship with God. I may not overtly say “No” to God but I definitely say, “Not Now”

Especially during storms.

And even during times of immense blessing.

Or extreme busyness.

I think I know best about this life that He gave to me.
Ahhh…
Because of Grace, He promises peace in the storms of distractions. He gives calm and steadiness in flurry.

He is Jehovah Shalom

Are we rich today or in poverty?

Have we “said ‘yes’ to God’s grace of a Messiah?” Have our lives “said ‘no’ to God’s gift of this moment” as Ann Voskamp describes in this post?

Ann Voskamp cautions, “we are always saying yes to someone”

Ann’s reminder is for me today: Peace is a Person, not a place

And we are rich in His grace!

But my eyes are fixed on you, Sovereign LORD;  in you I take refuge  ~Psalm 141:8

Authentic Grace or Avatar Grace

It is all about the eyes.

As a young girl I was at home and comfortable at the beach or the tennis courts. Such an introverted bent would have been ok if my parents lived quiet, reclusive lives, but that was not the case. People came over to our house all the time.

All. The. Time.

These people arrived with the same boundless energy and strong personality as my parents. They had so many questions and so much intense focus toward me.  I was intimidated and would squirm away in escape.

If there had been Avatars in those days, I would have gladly submitted one to stand in place of me.

Knowing I would not be able to navigate a life speaking only to tennis balls and kelp, my dad gave me a little conversational trick. He told me to look right between someone’s eyes at the little part of the skin between the eyebrows.

“That spot looks a little like the sand dunes at Zuma…you’ll feel comfortable there and then folks can get to know you instead of watching you squirm and wonder if you are upset with them or reacting to a bad lunch.” (As a kid, I loved how his instructions usually included references to puking.)

He carefully kept any uni-brow men away from the house so I could practice this new skill.

And it worked. This little trick helped me adapt to my anxiety through graduated exposure.  

As I grew in confidence, I transitioned to looking at someone  directly in the eye, without the Zuma dune crutch. There are a lot of pretty eyes out and about, although, (as many of you know from the personal choices I’ve made), I have never learned to spot a liar by their eyes.

Perhaps this is how it is with our Creator too. He calls us to live more than an Avatar life with Avatar grace. Avatar grace is dutiful presence, check-the-box religion. Kyle Idelman calls it being a fan. Avatar grace shows up and suits out but gives little more.  Avatar grace looks good, has all the best features and maybe even a few pat answers, but when the dark nights of the soul hit, those with Avatar grace rarely return my phone calls.

Avatars are fun to play with; cool to design and code in to the 2D web presence, but they are ill-suited for Authentic Living. I think it is best not to game-ify grace. Perhaps transitioning away from Avatars of good intentions and best-laid plans to the Authentic Grace of actions and accountable engagement is a truer form of the Creator’s call for me.

Happy Birthday today, Dad. I still love seeing your eyes and learning from you.

Revisiting Rethinking my belovedness

Revisiting belovedness==He Started It

“Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life’s problems fall into place of their own accord.”
–J.I. Packer

Sometimes we can’t pray away the pain…we have to go through healing first.

The worst thing about believing the lies of another person is the internalizing of the pain of being wrong about them.
I wondered how I could have been so stupid. So blind.

And so willing to believe.

The other worst thing about believing lies is the assault to my confidence. Maybe you have felt this loss too.

Our society deems some sins and some lapses of judgment worse than others. If I listen to these voices of condemnation, mixed with voices of the liar, then these voices can drown The Voice of Grace.

I wrote then, “Knowing the truth of your story is a powerful antidote to the shame, doubt, and the negative voices of others that have infected the story you tell yourself. God wants you to know the truth.”  And so He does. And there is more. There is The Voice of Grace.

And as I retrain myself to listen to the voice of Grace, I remember and re-learn about my Belovedness. Beloved becomes my Focus Word, a sort of “take that” to the lies and the liar.

But…all too soon my focus becomes a spiritual “nanny-nanny-boo-bo0″~~~more about me and less about Him:
A sort of: Sticks and Stones may break my bones but I am Beloved so you can’t hurt me.

The potential quicksand of this is that I may begin to believe more in my belovedness instead of  who died for me and who is The Beloved.

Deceiving voices will twist the best of intentions (recovery) into idolatry (the belovedness of me to the exclusion of the Belovedness of HE). It is essential for me to wait for the sound of His voice before I make decisions and before I believe too exclusively in the exclusive sparkle of my own Belovedness.

In spiritual dyslexia, I reversed the order of Proverbs 3:5: Trust in the Lord with all your heart… And do not lean on your own understanding. It becomes time for me to center and reacquaint the focus word Beloved as being about Him and not me.

Security comes when we bring the empty well of our hearts to Jesus and ask Him to fill and fulfill us with the security of His unfailing love. ~Renee Swope

Possible ways to Stay Centered in or Reacquaint with His Belovedness

1. Know the names of the Beloved. Repeat and Claim the names.
2. It’s finals week all the time. Return again and again to give our whole heart to The Beloved. This is not a one-time only “Shazam” prayer or practice. We will eventually come to a place of complete trust, but some days, for me at least, requires a minute-by-minute recall
3. Study the words of The Beloved. Read the prayers of The Beloved. Read the prayers of the leaders in the Bible. Put these prayers into practice.
   For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the LORD and to practice it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel. ~ Ezra 7:10
4. Baste every hour with Gratitude
5. Share with others close to you The Truth of The Beloved. Remember, He started it.
6. A mature man in the faith admonished me to reach out to others in spite of my own pain, “Invest in someone else,” he said. I did not realize what a place of healing and comfort that would become.

Because of Grace, i have received shared belovedness from The Beloved. Step 7 in this list is empty. Might you also share through a comment your step 7 here?

To the Only God

More of You Less of Me

Words for the Soul~February 20

What to give others:

Acceptance
Attention
help, (maybe)
Love, certainly.
Criticism, never.
Grace, Always!

inspired by TUT
Other Words for the Soul

Mid-Week Question to Consider~Patterns

What pattern in my life fractures grace and growth?

photo by Helen Teague

Previous Questions

Mid-Week Question~January 25

What if our default response was always grace?
What would that look like?

{a slightly smaller, reminder size, perhaps to clip and carry?}

A post by Jennifer to read and consider… When Women Hurt Women

Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another…
Colossians 3:12-13

 

Previous Question

The Soil of His Grace

Quote by Os Hillman

Grace: Our True Voice

I created this picture from a photo sent to me by Dennis Rey after reading Bonnie’s post Leave Room for Grace

The Mystery of Grace

I do not understand the mystery of grace~
only that it meets us where we are,
but does not leave us where it found us.
~Anne Lamott

Grace At My Grasp Everyday

Sensing Grace

I finally sense the grace
that is at my grasp every day.
It is here.

When it’s frigid,
when it’s bleak,
when I’m joyous.
It is here.

When health suffers,
when loved ones pass,
when I’m grateful.
It is here.

When hearts ache,
when fear festers,
when I’m content.
It is here.

It is here, because
You are here.

-~Karen Laven

The Most Insensitive Thing

Saw this picture and felt an immediate reaction

And I thought about it.

Awhile.

Then, I tried to stop thinking about it.
Tried to avoid thinking about it because something was festering.

Tried to distract myself from thinking about it (an old ploy)

And then I realized…

Just recently.
The most insensitive thing that I could think of has
already happened.

So this is what this feels like.

…

So, what now? What is the lesson, as Dad would asked.

And so…Flipping This over a little…

I have heard HAPPINESS defined as wanting what you already have.

I have always liked the way Katherine Hepburn described it:

Maybe being on this side of what I think is the most insensitive thing is part of the complete happiness definition. The complete happiness tableau, if you will excuse my preoccupation with all expressions borrowed from A&E right now.

Maybe wanting what you already have and surviving the most insensitive thing is a type of happiness. Maybe it is what my friend Ron reminds me from 2 Corinthians 12:9:

Maybe it is Acceptance.
And maybe it is peace.
In any case, it is not because I am strong.
Or brave. Or tough like Sidney Bristow in “Alias”.

FAR, far from it.

It is Because His love is made perfect in my weakness and Because of prayers of faithful friends and Because of surrendering to a power greater than me.

And Because of Grace…

What about you? Have you already survived the most insensitive thing?
And was His grace there?